Bleh
by MilleniumGirl
Summary: Bleh! Ever know that feeling when you just can't talk right? Seto Kaiba is in the same boat. What do his conversations sound like when he feels like a broken printer blotting out gibberish?
1. Seto loses speech

It was a boring day to top all boring days. Seto Kaiba had finished his work, tried to find something on TV, failed, tried to read a book, failed, and even tried to socialize. That went nowhere fast. His phone calls where always so bland. A recent one with a friend went something like this:

Duke: So, Why'd you call?

Kaiba: I, was.... bored.

Duke: Oh. So'm I. 

Kaiba: So.

Duke: Yeah. 

Kaiba: How's work...? Oh yeah that's right...

Duke: Yeah. 

Kaiba: Huh.

Duke: Yep.

Kaiba: So...

Duke:...?

Kaiba: I forgot.

Duke: Oh. *checks watch* Um, I have to go.

Kaiba: Oh. O.K. 

Duke: Yeah.

Kaiba: Um

Duke: So, yeah.

Kaiba: Uh-huh.

Duke: See you round.

Kaiba:... 

Duke: Bye

Kaiba: Um, bye

He even couldn't get a conversation sparked with his little brother. Usually talking wasn't an issue between these two.

Usually it was sit down, say hi, ask what's up, talk a little, spread dirt a little, explain what a certain word meant to Mokuba, etc. But today, it didn't roll so well. 

Kaiba sat down next to Mokuba. " So, hi." 

"Oh, hello, Seto," Mokuba said brightly. 

" Hi," Seto said akwardly. 

Mokuba cocked his head. " Uh, something wrong?" 

Kaiba made a face. " Nope, what makes you think so?" 

Mokuba shrugged. " Nothin', you just sounded a little stressed... Is it work?" 

Kaiba shrugged back. " No. Um, what was I saying?" 

Mokuba cocked his head so much that it looked in danger of teetering off his head. " Uhhh, you weren't saying anything... Are you sure you're O.K.?" 

Seto realized that today was not his day for conversations. He tried to tell Mokuba this but his sentence came out more as " Today, not good, conversations?" 

Mokuba looked at Seto. Why was his big brother tongue-tied...? 

Mokuba raised an eyebrow and said, " Something's wrong."

"No," Kaiba said a little too quickly. But the thing was, nothing was wrong! Not a thing, except that his cologne had been sitting next to a shampoo bottle for too long and that it now smelled like rotten strawberries... but that wasn't worth getting all discoordinated for. Kaiba sat up straight and decided not to let himself get tongue-tied again. He was setting a bad example for his little brother. 

" So, how's work?" As soon as he had said it he slapped himself on the forehead.

Mokuba's eyebrows disappeared into his hair. He got up out of his chair, grabbed Seto's arm, and started leading him upstairs.

"What are you doing?" Seto said, suddenly aware that he was being led by his arm. 

" I'm taking you to your room, where you can lay down," Mokuba said, stressing the last two words. Kaiba gently yanked himself away, mumbling that he was fine, and that the strawberries couldn't make him uncoordinated. Mokuba backed up slowly, almost spearing himself on the end of Kaiba's glass Blue Eyes White Dragon statue. His face read as " Don't hurt me, please don't hurt me..." 

Kaiba immediately felt bad and tried to tell Mokuba that he was sorry for the way he was acting... it came out as a strange noise that sounded just like a printer when it has a defalut error. Kaiba felt like a broken printer and the way they print out gibberish on random parts of the page. 

"Um, we can c-call the doctor, or the straight-jacket people," Mokuba said in a small voice. Kaiba tried to speak but decided against it and grabebd some Kaiba Corp. stationary off a table instead. On it he wrote, " I'm sorry, I'm having trouble communicating right now, but I'm not going insane!" Mokuba read the note, glanced at Kaiba, read the note, glanced at Kaiba, and said, " Really?"

Kaiba nodded. " I screw up what, I'm trying, uuuuuugggghhh..." he said exasperatedly. He hastily grabbed the notepad and wrote, " Yes, I'm sorry; I don't know why I can't speak right today." 

" Well, you can still write... hey, why don't you get on Instant Messaging? Chances are someone you know will be on, and that way you can still communicate, but write, too!" Mokuba said comfortingly. Kaiba nodded furiously and patted Mokuba on the head to say, " Good idea." 

Chat Room Mania 2.0 

.:Welcome, Seto Kaiba! You are now logged in:. 

.:START A CONVERSATION HERE:.

blueeyes: Um, hello?

dOnUtMaN: Kaiba?

blueeyes: Wheeler. 

dOnUtMaN: Yeah thats me, so what R U up to? 

blueeyes: Trying to figure out why I am so messed up today

heartofthecards: Maybe we can help :) 

shiningfriendship: Great idea, Yugi! So what are you having trouble with? 

Luv4Serenity: Yeah Kaiba we can help like on OPrah or somthing 

DiceBoySerenityLuvr: Yeah I love that show, shes so sympathetic 

Luv4Serenity: Did you catch last night's

DiceBoySerenityLuvr: No I didnt, was it good? 

shiningfriendship: Let's help Kaiba now, O.K. Duke and Tristan? Let's see, first we should hear the conflict, then help him solve it it easy steps. 

dOnUtMaN: Yep like first step: reaching the goal second step: how to reach the goal, etc?

heartofthecards: Yes thats it exactly! Let's see, we already know the problem, so let's start with... friendship! 

BritishRulz: Hi guys! I logged in a little late but I read all about Kaiba's problem, good idea to start with friendship, Yugi! 

heartofthecards: Thanx Bakura! It's most important in any situtaion to remember that friends will always be there for you and you can always ask them for help! 

DiceBoySerenityLuvr: Yeah, and always stick up for your friends

Luv4Serenity: even if it looks tuff! 

dOnUtMaN: Especially if it looks tough! Let's here it for friendship! 

heartofthecards: Yay! 

shiningfriendship: Yeah! 

BritishRulz: even Kaiba couldn't say no to this! Kaiba let's hear a Yeah! 

.:blueeyes has logged out:. 

heartofthecards: Kaiba...?

Kaiba stared at his blank computer screen. That had almost worked... 


	2. Lufsserts?

MG: Okie, now we're back! Thanks to all the people who reviewed ^^  
  
Seto: Now tongue-tied, story get I ..... uuuuggghh.... bleh.  
  
MG: ^_^ ? ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~  
Kaiba sat upside-down in his chair with a low-fat yogurt. He was watching CNN, but the boring news reports did not break past Kaiba's Wall of Disorder. When he tried to pay attention to the news lady, he started thinking about how long it must have taken to style her hair. The more he thought about it, it kinda looked more like she had styled her hair with a cat 3 minutes before she had gone on air. Then, to add insult to injury, she might have used the cat to style the man next to her's hair. And then maybe she named the cat. Kaiba began to think about what he would name a cat if he had one.  
  
Kaiba suddenly snapped back into reality. What was he doing, sitting upside- down in this chair, eating nasty "Vanilla" lowfat yogurt and thinking about cat names? He dragged himself upright and made his way to his office. Maybe some work would make him feel better. On the way down the hall he passed by Mokuba.  
  
" Feeling better?" Mokuba asked brightly.  
  
" Better perhaps, stupid, cat names, not good... bleh..." he concluded, giving Mokuba his yogurt cup and walking briskly the rest of the way to his office. Once inside he sat down at his chair and turned his computer on. Nothing happened, so he tried again. He was getting very impatient and began to press the button rapidly, wondering how much time it would take to fix if the dumb thing was broken. He almost started to take the tower apart before realizing that the computer was already on and he had been jamming the power button to no effect. Kaiba sighed and took deep breaths. Usually computers did not have him confused. He shook his head rapidly and brought up a work program.  
  
He never got around to working. When he started to type, everything came out weird, just like his speech...  
  
08^Archives, employed making; "fatigued..?-)2 Excerpt ';l{ from program, recent, work?' +++ Coordinates;/1` 98 gagfvfjsdbgfvksuyfdvgw308tr5 [2 9 347  
  
That last part was when Kaiba slammed his head against the keyboard in frustration. He sprang upright when he heard a knock at the door. It must be the straight-jacket people, he thought. They know I've gone crazy and have come to take me away... THEN THEY'LL PUT MOKUBA IN A BOY'S HOME!! GAAAAAAAAAAAH!!!  
  
He leapt up out of the chair and yelled," YOU'LL NEVER TAKE ME ALIVE!!!!"  
  
The voice on the other side of the door said, "Ummm, Seto? Is everything all right...?"  
  
Kaiba growled at himself in frustration. How could he have been so stupid? It was just Mokuba. He sat down hurriedly and told Mokuba to come in, but he missed his chair in the process and groped for the desk. He ended up on the floor with the keyboard on his face.  
  
Mokuba came in and took a deep breath. " You know, you are really going to hurt yourself if you don't lay down."  
  
Kaiba laid down on the spot. Mokuba shook his head. He was about to say something, but he started to read what Kaiba had been writing instead. He raised his eyebrows and then looked at his brother, who had tried to put the keyboard back on the desk without getting up and ended up knocking the mouse off the desk.  
  
" It's gotta be stress," Mokuba mumbled to himself. He turned to Kaiba and said, " Did you do any stressful work projects lately?"  
  
Kaiba, who was sitting on the floor cross-legged holding the mouse upright like a fork, said, " Projects, work, uuummmm, lufsserts?"  
  
Mokuba cocked his head again. " Bless you."  
  
" Lufsserts! Sey!"  
  
"Huh?"  
  
"Krow! Lufsserts si ti!"  
  
" Um, what does that mean...?"  
  
Kaiba shook his head furiously. He knew he was saying the words right, but why couldn't his little brother understand him? " Abukom," he said softly.  
  
"...?"  
  
"ABUKOM!!!! KROW SAW LUFSSERTS!!!" he said, holding his hands up.  
  
" Seto, you're not making any sense..."  
  
Kaiba got up off the floor and pointed to Mokuba. " Abukom."  
  
" No. Mokuba," Mokuba corrected.  
  
" Abukom."  
  
Mokuba shook his head no. He pointed to the computer and said, " Computer."  
  
Kaiba shook his head yes. He knew that! " Retupmoc," he said calmly. " Abukom, I ydaerla wonk tath."  
  
Mokuba's eyes got big. " Maybe we should call that therapist."  
  
" Acinom?"  
  
" Um, O.K., right then," Mokuba said as he picked up the phone in the office and dialed. Kaiba slipped out of his office and picked up another phone so he could listen to the conversation.  
  
Mokuba: Hello, this is Mokuba Kaiba.  
  
Monica: Oh, hello, Mokuba! What did you call for? Is something wrong?  
  
Mokuba: Uh, yeah, kind of... Well, see, my brother can't talk.  
  
Monica: ...huh?  
  
Mokuba: Like, he can't speak right. I think it's stress, but I can't really ask him, because he just says gibberish.  
  
Monica: But... does he understand what you're saying to him?  
  
Mokuba: Yeah. But he responds weird. At first he said real words, but now they don't make any sense.  
  
Monica: Like?  
  
Mokuba: He keeps saying "lufsserts."  
  
Monica: Bless you.  
  
Mokuba: No, that's what Seto keeps saying.  
  
Monica: He says "Bless You?"  
  
Mokuba: NO, HE SAYS LUFSSERTS!!!!  
  
Kaiba put his end of the phone down. What was Mokuba talking about? He hadn't been saying lufsserts or whatever... he had been yelling Stressful! over and over again! And whenever he had said "Mokuba," his little brother couldn't understand him then, either! Maybe something about the way he said it was confusing people... He shook his head and went back into the office as Mokuba put down the phone.  
  
"Seto, I called Monica. She said she'd be happy to come over and try to help you talk again," Mokuba said happily.  
  
" Abukom? T'ond llet Haon," Kaiba said exasperatedly. He did NOT want his stepbrother to figure out about this.  
  
" I'm sorry," Mokuba said apologetically. " I can't understand. But Monica will help when she gets here. But right now I think I'll call Noah... maybe he can help too."  
  
Kaiba froze up and his eyes got wide. " ON ON ON ON ON ON!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOON!!!!" he yelled, jumping up and down. Mokuba paused and watched him, completely clueless as to what this display was for.  
  
" Uh-huh... that's nice," he said politely, starting to dial.  
  
Kaiba raced over and grabbed the phone out of Mokuba's hand. He put it back in its cradle and shook his head 'no'.  
  
" Abukom, on Haon," he said sternly. Mokuba had begun to recognize his new name by now and shuddered under his big brother's tone of voice.  
  
" O.K. then, I won't call Noah," he said in a small voice.  
  
" Knath uoy," Kaiba said, patting him on the head.  
  
Just then, the doorbell rang. Mokuba ran to get it and came hurriedly back, pushing Kaiba into a coach and sitting down next to him. Monica, the therapist, came and sat down in a chair across from them.  
  
" What a lovely house," she said brightly.  
  
" Knath uoy," Kaiba said with a calm expression. Maybe Monica could understand him.  
  
She couldn't. " Well, Mokuba, I see what you were saying now," she said, peering at Kaiba. "He seems to hear us, but doesn't respond correctly."  
  
" N'tod klat touba em ekil M'i ton ereh," he mumbled angrily. Monica had some nerve.  
  
" Um," Mokuba said, wrinkling up his face. " Right then. Anyway, I recognize one word he says to me. He calls me Abukom."  
  
Kaiba shook his head. He knew he didn't call his little brother Abukom! That sounded like 'Mokuba' backwards... It hit him. His eyes got wide and he ran out of the room and into his office. Grabbing a piece of paper, he wrote 'Abukom', and then he wrote 'Mokuba.' He was right. Whatever he intended to say was coming out backwards. He ran back into the room where Mokuba and Monica were sitting, startled, screaming, " SDRAWKCAB! SDRAWKCAB!" 


	3. The Secretary

MilleniumGirl: Thanks for reviewing! I'd just thought I'd finish this one up so I could get to work on my other stuff.  
  
Bakura: Positive. Real positive.  
  
MG: But! I have another story I'm working on! I don't wanna...  
  
Marik: Fine! Hey... Am I in the next story you're working on...?  
  
MG: Yeah.  
  
Marik: Then by all means, finish this one!  
  
..................................................................................  
  
Monica was out of there in a hurry.  
  
"Ohhhh, why'd she go?" Mokuba mumbled, then looked at his big brother, who was standing with one hand on his hip. He was looking at where Monica had been sitting with absolute disgust. Kaiba made an angry noise between his teeth and walked into his office, Mokuba at his heels.  
  
"I think might know... well, I have this hunch... To start..." Mokuba said, ripping a piece of paper out of the printer, "Write something down. Anything."  
  
Kaiba took the paper and wrote "olleH."  
  
"So it is backwards...." A light bulb went off above his head. "Got it. You need to put things forward again."  
  
Kaiba wrote "Olleh."  
  
"Erm... almost."  
  
Kaiba didn't trust himself to speak, but instead looked glumly at the wall. But then it hit him. Maybe something was out of order, and it was making him act like this. He sprang up out of his chair and started to walk around, making sure everything was in the right spot. Mokuba seemed to understand a little of what he was doing, so he helped him.  
  
Hours later they had searched the whole mansion and found nothing out of place. Mokuba suggested the Kaiba Corp building, which Kaiba agreed to with a "Doog Aedi." When they got into the car, Kaiba put it in reverse, and they hit the mailbox, so Mokuba decided to help him with the shift stick. They finally got to the building and went straight to Kaiba's office.  
  
Upon entering, something seemed wrong. Everything was quiet and dark. Kaiba opened the door to his office slowly, and heard noises coming from inside. His eyes narrowed as he and a frightened looking Mokuba walked inside.  
  
Kaiba's secretary stood up from the floor so fast she banged her head on the trophy shelf above her.  
  
"OOWWW, I mean, oh um, sorry, Kai- I mean Mr. Kaiba, just was looking for, um, paper," she said, then ran away.  
  
"The door's this way," Mokuba called out, but the secretary did not return. Could this secretary lurking around his office be what was making him so out of place?  
  
The first thing Kaiba did was check his desk. All the contents were in the right places, so the secretary obviously hadn't taken anything. The drawer she had been looking through contained no paper, and his secretary was supposed to know that...  
  
Mokuba yelled a distance down the hall. Kaiba leapt up and ran, finding Mokuba poised at the door of a janitorial closet. Inside was Kaiba's real secretary.  
  
"Um..." Mokuba said cautiously, "what are you doing in here?"  
  
The secretary mumbled through a bandana tied around her mouth. Kaiba ripped it off and she said, "...little girl came in, and then I was just cleaning up, you know, when she tripped me and put me in here and tied me up but she did a real poor job, but I still couldn't get out because I'm dainty, and then I heard her go into the uniform closet and she put on a secretary uniform and then she stole my wig!" The secretary wailed the last notes.  
  
Mokuba looked at her like she was stupid. Kaiba looked at her like she was mental.  
  
"Well, she did!" the secretary said angrily.  
  
"You wear a wig?" Mokuba said, dumbfounded. "And I thought you were a natural blonde..."  
  
Kaiba sighed and walked off to find the imposter who had been going through his desk. He started checking all the closets down the hall, Mokuba behind him. He finally came to a door locked from the inside. This was the one. He picked the lock and swung the door open wide...  
  
"Aha!" he yelled, and Mokuba couldn't tell whether or not he was saying it backwards because "aha" is a palindrome.  
  
But anyway, Kaiba was looking down upon a girl in an oversized Kaiba Corp ladies uniform wearing a blonde wig. The girl yipped and tried to push past Kaiba, but no one alive has ever been able to push past Kaiba, so she managed to get herself pinned against the wall. The wig fell off. It was...  
  
"Serenity?" Mokuba said with surprise. Kaiba withdrew from the girl who had been touched by that mutt Wheeler on several occasions. She had been touched by Tristan, too. Yuck.  
  
Serenity looked around nervously and said, "I didn't do it!"  
  
"Didn't do what?" Mokuba said.  
  
"I didn't sneak up here and go through Kaiba's desk looking for his dueling deck so I could steal the good cards and have my big brother win a duel against him!"  
  
Kaiba growled.  
  
"Oops... Did I just say that out loud?" Serenity said, putting a hand to her mouth.  
  
"Yeah, you did, and you're going to pay for it!" Mokuba seethed through his teeth.  
  
Mokuba launched himself in an all out attack on Serenity but Kaiba calmly held him back and said, "I keep my dueling deck at my house in a safe."  
  
Mokuba stopped. "Yay, Seto! We fixed your problem!"  
  
Kaiba realized it, too. "You're right, we did!"  
  
"You have a house?" Serenity said.  
  
"Finally, I can talk right again! It must have been her," Kaiba said, pointing to Serenity.  
  
"You have a house? You don't live _here_?"  
  
"Yeah, Seto, it must have been some weird intuition that she was going through your stuff! Wow, I'm glad we figured that out, or you would've had to go to meetings like that..." Mokuba said happily.  
  
"You don't live in Kaiba Corp? But Joey said..."  
  
Kaiba's secretary hopped over from her closet looking angry. Mokuba untied her, and she ripped the blonde wig off Serenity and stormed out of the hallway.  
  
"But?" Serenity said as Kaiba pushed her out of the hallway and into the elevator.  
  
"You didn't even get mad at her!" Mokuba said, watching as the elevator doors closed on a confused looking Serenity.  
  
"Yeah, well, I decided to save my breath. She's not worth it," Kaiba said as he locked up his office. The two then went home.  
  
Somewhere on the other side of town, Joey started talking backwards because his little sister was in an elevator in Kaiba Corp wearing an oversized uniform going towards the roof level with no intention of pressing any buttons.  
  
.........................................................................  
  
Serenity: Elevators are fun! They go up and down, up and down...  
  
Joey: Taerg.  
  
MG: So yep, that's it for this story, and now I'm free to work on better ones! (Runs off)  
  
Marik: I don't know if she wants you to review or not, but I would say yes just in case. So review.  
  
Joey: Yhw em? 


End file.
